Evelyn to Rosie: Taking You Outside

Down there in the low heat where we crept over leaves, what was the one thought I had but how’d I get you here after all this time, where all the bugs live and you’d get your pretty skin all bitten up so I didn’t think but to keep moving.

I want to tell you about snakeweed, but I think you know already and I’d have been just showing off, anyway, because you’re pretty and you were so close to the river and you didn’t ask to hold my hand even once but you followed me.

Anywhere we go, we kick up what was there already.

I never dropped anything like keys by the river before, shiny in the mud there, with grass growing around them. They made a sound, but I didn’t hear it. We missed a train, and I didn’t hear that either. I kissed your mouth. It was hot as the wind inside. You kiss slow and curious like an animal that knows me. Your eyes get soft, like something that’s never been tamed. I forgot who was who again. I’m always doing that.

You would’ve liked that tree, Birdgirl. I’m going to cut your name in it.

We stood in the grove and we smoked 3 feet from a big rodent hole, and a pile of gray feathers from a murdered bird. I left my filter stubbed out like an offering once the nicotine made my veins sing and my head spin. You did the same. Then we got married the way anyone ever has.